Quotes & Sayings About Alabama

I was in my late twenties and about to start my fourth year at the SPDC when I met Walter McMillian. His case was one of the flood of cases I'd found myself frantically working on after learning of a growing crisis in Alabama. The state had nearly a hundred people on death row as well as the fastest-growing condemned population in the country, but it also had no public defender system, which meant that large numbers of death row prisoners had no legal representation of any kind. — Bryan Stevenson

What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama. — Bear Bryant

Beyonce, to me, doesn't have a f
king Purple Rain, but she's the biggest thing on Earth. How can you be that big without at least one Sweet Home Alabama or Old Time Rock & Roll? ... People are like, 'Beyonce's hot. Got a nice f
king a
.' I'm like, 'Cool, I like skinny white chicks with big t
s.' Doesn't really f
king do much for me. — Kid Rock

Consequently, the town remained the same size for over 150 years. Its primary reason for existence was government. What saved it from becoming another grubby little Alabama community was that Maycomb's proportion of professional people ran high: one went to Maycomb to have his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his mules vetted, his soul saved, his mortgage extended. — Harper Lee

it always bothered me to know that the right to have a cool drink of water on a hot Alabama day could depend simply on the color of a person's skin. — Toni Tennille

I was born in segregated Birmingham, Alabama. I didn't have a white classmate till we moved to Denver. — Condoleezza Rice

I taught myself how to pole vault in one day. The next day I entered a meet to pole vault and won it all for the state of Alabama. — Bo Jackson

It's going to storm," she said.
"You've been in Alabama for twenty-four hours and you think you can
read the weather?"
"Then why is it so dark?"
"It's going to storm."
She wanted to hit him. "Then I'd appreciate getting to my car before it
hits. I don't like thunderstorms. "
"No, I imagine you don't," he said softly. "That's just something else
you're afraid of. Sex, men, thunderstorms, being poor. Me. Anything else?
"Yeah," she said. "I'm afraid of alligators and poisonous snakes, or
otherwise I wouldn't be here in this hearse with you. — Anne Stuart

Whatever they have done, or are doing, or will do to the people locked away forever in Guantanamo Bay, they will do the same to the people in Harlem and the people in Los Angeles and the people in Texas and the people in Washington and the people in Florida and of course to the people in Alabama and the people in South Carolina ... — Banole

In Alabama can't - ?" I was indignant. "I do. I guess it's to protect our frail ladies from sordid cases like Tom's. Besides," Atticus grinned, "I doubt if we'd ever get a complete case tried - the — Harper Lee

A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected? — Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1965, as Ralph Gleason has reported, when Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama, was brutally attacked by local and state constabulary, Louis Armstrong, then in Copenhagen, said after watching the carnage on television, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched. — Nat Hentoff

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. — Michelle Alexander

I played at Georgia, I coached at Alabama. I know how to beat both of them. — Pat Dye

I spent 34 months on the battleship Alabama, South Dakota-class. I was a gun captain. First we went to Russia for about 11 months with the British convoys. Then we were up in Norway and Scandinavia. — Bob Feller

When the injunction was issued in Birmingham, our failure to obey it bewildered our opponents. They did not know what to do. We did not hide our intentions. In fact, I announced our plan to the press, pointing out that we were not anarchists advocating lawlessness, but that it was obvious to us that the courts of Alabama had misused the judicial process in order to perpetuate injustice and segregation. Consequently, we could not, in good conscience, obey their findings. I intended to be one of the first to set — Martin Luther King Jr.

How many ya'll parents smoke weed? My momma still grows illegal weed in Alabama. — Yelawolf

He never spoke with any bitterness at all, no matter how awful the things he said. Are there really people without resentment, without hate, she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it? Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed without knowing they follow it, the sharecropper's wife in Alabama and the lama in Tibet and the entomologist in Peru and the millworker in Odessa and the greengrocer in London and the goatherd in Nigeria and the old, old man sharpening a stick by a dry streambed somewhere in Australia, and all the others. There is not one of us who has not known them. There are enough of them, enough to keep us going. Perhaps. — Ursula K. Le Guin

We've always been suburb people, and we lived in the East Bay when I was in Oakland. This time around, we're staying in the city, and my kids are getting that city life experience, which is something you don't get too much of in Alabama. — Tim Hudson

When states like Alabama and Arizona passed some of the harshest immigration laws in history, my Attorney General took them on in court and we won. — Barack Obama

I'll be fine ' Pen told me a little curtly. 'Where are you going anyway '
'The United States. Alabama.'
'Looking for a change of scene '
'Looking for a dead woman.'
'Get Jenna-Jane Mulbridge to come down here and I'll make you one. — Mike Carey

I grew up in Florida in different cities. I was born in Mississippi. My parents moved a lot, so I moved to Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, all through the South. But my family's roots were from central Florida, like Daytona Beach area, so we ended up moving there. — Diplo

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world. — E. O. Wilson

Tim Tebow's like the snake doctor for Florida. Gotta stop the snake doctor, keep the Gators from moving the ball ... this time he snaked Alabama with a play action pass. — Gary Danielson

I grew up in Mobile, Alabama - somebody's got to be from Mobile, right? - and Mobile sits at the confluence of five rivers, forming this beautiful delta. And the delta has alligators crawling in and out of rivers filled with fish and cypress trees dripping with snakes, birds of every flavor. — Mike DeGruy

When I was on 'All My Children,' we did a thing for 'Seventeen Magazine' where a girl won a date. I went to her prom with her in Alabama, and she was a sweetheart. I didn't move to Alabama and I didn't buy a farm there, but we still keep in touch. — Josh Duhamel

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: 'So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'
Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. — Sarah Vowell

In the wake of this disaster, the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida should know that the United States Congress stands ready to help them in their time of need,. — Bill Frist

Every morning, just like in Alabama, I got up with the sun, ate my breakfast even before my mother and sisters and brothers, and went to school, winter, spring, and fall alike to run and jump and bend my body this way and that for Mr. Charles Riley. — Jesse Owens

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

Despite its reputation, Appalachia - especially northern Alabama and Georgia to southern Ohio - has far lower church attendance than the Midwest, parts of the Mountain West, and much of the space between Michigan and Montana. Oddly enough, we think we attend church more than we actually do. In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South. — J.D. Vance

In his dark story collection Poachers, Tom Franklin, who once worked in a grit factory, offers the sad and sorry lives of people stuck in the back-waters of the Alabama River, who tend to subsist on a steady diet of moon-shine and stale crackers. — Nancy Pearl

This part of Alabama is swampy, with mosquitoes that could murder a buffalo, given half a chance, not to mention dangerous flying roaches and a posse of local rats big enough to haul a wagon train from here to Timbuctoo. — Truman Capote

I lived in Alabama and Georgia, and the people in the south are wonderful. It's God, faith, family, country. — Sean Hannity

That's starting to depress me about UFOs. The fact that they cross galaxies ... and always end up in places like Fyfe, Alabama. — Bill Hicks

You got to understand, Arthur Alexander was there with us, and some of his crew. It was in the '50s in Alabama. It was before even the civil rights stuff even started. You can imagine the hatred, although we didn't have it as bad as other parts of the country, I must say. — Donnie Fritts

Where the Tennessee River, like a silver snake, winds her way through the clay hills of Alabama, sits high on these hills, my home town, Florence. — William Christopher Handy

Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing. — John Steinbeck

Most of all, our troops from Alabama said they appreciate the care packages from folks back home. — Mike Rogers

When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

An Atheist in Alabama is one that doesn't believe in Bear Bryant. — Wally Butts

We're from Athens, Alabama. That's my town. People think it's Muscle Shoals, but they have no idea. It's a quiet, sleepy little town, about 45 minutes from Muscle Shoals. It's really hard to be a band in Athens; there are no venues. — Brittany Howard

College football was a religion in Alabama, and Saturdays in the fall were holy days. — Lexi George

The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality. — Zelda Fitzgerald

I'm not going to be the Alabama coach. — Nick Saban

In 1960, in Blackburn v. Alabama, the Court said, "Coercion can be mental as well as physical." In reviewing whether a confession was psychologically coerced by the police, the following factors are crucial: (1) the length of the interrogation, (2) whether it was prolonged in nature, (3) when it took place, day or night, with a strong suspicion around nighttime confessions, and (4) the psychological makeup - intelligence, sophistication, education, and so on - of the suspect. — John Grisham

I know my destiny. I was born into animosity, bigotry and hatred. We had water for white folks, and water for coloured folks. White lines, black lines. I came from Beaufort in South Carolina, and it was tougher than Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. — Joe Frazier

She leaned her uninjured shoulder against his plump, furry behind and shoved while she bitched to herself, "Four years at the military academy, two years at Kansas State University, survival camp in the swamps of Alabama, more schooling in Florida, and then torture endurance training with the Mossad and all so I could heave a bear's ass into a helicopter. Unfreaking real. — Vonnie Davis

My girlfriend and I rented a nice house on the river and I was there for about two and a half months, and we were just out of Alabama. I hardly got to see Alabama. — Albert Finney

For women in, say, Alabama, 'feminism' is a dirty word. They would never march in the streets. But although they don't think of themselves as the beneficiaries of feminism, they are. — Hanna Rosin

it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. Then one was fully equipped to hold on under any conditions. "What — Harper Lee

They would come down in Mississippi, they hired me as a talent scout. And I would go all over Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and find out different artists for them. — Ike Turner

Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. — James Carville

After drinking too many banana daiquiris, Miranda staggered into a beachside tattoo parlor in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and got the Chinese symbols for "peace" and "harmony" tattooed on her ankle. Years later she discovered the symbols actually translated to "rabbit nephew," and she cried for three days. — Kirker Butler

Sometimes that's all you can do, I think. Hold hands. Because life gets so scary sometimes, so bleak, so cold, that you are beyond being able to be comforted by mere words.


'Men are for amusement only. They are treats. Like candy. Like ice cream on an Alabama afternoon. A dessert. They are not the main course. As soon as you have a man in your life who becomes the main course, that is the time, my sweet, when you should go on a diet. Right that second. Men are for dessert only.' Envision: honey.
'Yum, yum,' I told her.
'They are yummy.' She winked at me. 'But never take them seriously. A bite here and there is puh-lenty. All three of my husbands died, bless their pea-brained souls, but I never thought of them as the chicken and potatoes. They were always the flamin' cherries jubilee at the end of dinner.' She stared off into space. 'And there was many a time, darlin', that I wanted to set them on fire. — Cathy Lamb

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. — Harper Lee

Pensacola isn't Florida, really. It's the Panhandle. It's right up there near Alabama and Louisiana. It's, like, a stroll away from New Orleans. I feel like New Orleans is home. — Katy Mixon

We must educate and train our children to compete and succeed in the 21st century. Our kids are not going to grow up to compete with children in Alabama or Mississippi. They're going to grow up to compete with kids in India, and China, all over the world; children who are learning to compete and succeed in the 21st century themselves. — Marco Rubio

God huffed and took a couple more breaths before he released his secret to his best friend. No one knew this story except him and the DA of Clayhatchee, Alabama. "When — A.E. Via

She felt the essence of herself pulled finer and smaller like those streams of spun glass that pull and stretch till there remains but a glimmering illusion. Neither falling nor breaking, the stream spins finer. She felt herself very small and ecstatic. Alabama was in love. — Zelda Fitzgerald

It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa — Groucho Marx

The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I. — Condoleezza Rice

The fairest state of them all, this tranquil and beloved domain - what has it now become? A nursery for Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas. A monstrous breeding farm to supply the sinew to gratify the maw of Eli Whitney's infernal machine, cursed be that blackguard's name! In such a way is our human decency brought down, when we pander all that is in us noble and just to the false god which goes by the vile name of Capital! Oh, Virginia, woe betide thee! Woe, thrice woe, and ever damned in memory be the day when poor black men in chains first trod upon thy sacred strand! — William Styron

You can find yourself a decent,
honorable man, one to love you, respect you, cherish you. Someone with
morals, with a decent job and a good future. That's what you think you
want, isn't it? Not some white trash from Alabama. Not some ex-con
who's running the scam of a lifetime. You're so good and decent, the very
thought of me disgusts you, doesn't it?" His voice was low and seductive
as he pushed the words at her.
She met his gaze with what she hoped was a fearless one of her own.
"Yes," she said.
"Then tell me, Rachel," he said, letting his hand toy with the loose
neckline of her tunic, "why aren't you out somewhere, fucking your little
gentleman's brains out? Why are you here with me, quivering when I
touch you? — Anne Stuart

While it is not likely that Democrats will start winning statewide elections tomorrow in Alabama, South Carolina, Kansas, Wyoming, or Utah, they will never win if they don't plant a flag and start organizing. My own state of Vermont is a good example. Forty-five years ago, Vermont was one of the most Republican states in the country. Today, as a result of a lot of hard work by many people, it is one of the most progressive. It — Bernie Sanders

The saddest face I ever saw on Martin Luther King was at the funeral of the four little girls slain in Birmingham, Alabama. — James A. Forbes

I must acknowledge God. It says so in the Constitution of Alabama. It says so in the First Amendment of the Constitution. — Roy Moore

I'm involved with Kid One Transport and Studio by the Tracks in Alabama. Kid One literally transports kids to better health by giving them transportation they may need to get medical care. Studio by the Tracks is an art outlet for mentally challenged children. — Taylor Hicks

The Hippocratic oath prevents doctors and medical personnel from participating in executions, so Alabama officials planned for untrained correctional staff to take a knife and make a two-inch incision in Mr. Nelson's arm or groin so that they could find a vein in which to inject him with toxins and kill him. We argued that without anesthesia, the procedure would be needlessly painful and cruel. — Bryan Stevenson

The Bible is full of dreadful things. There's a Psalm that says "Happy will you be when you take your enemy's children and dash their heads against the stones." Don't read that to me on Sunday morning and say "This is the word of the Lord." It's like that crazy man down in Alabama who wanted to put the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. — John Shelby Spong

You're not from around here. You talk funny." "Alabama. Where bears don't eat people, it don't usually snow, and it's customary for the new guy getting told the tale to buy the drinks for the men doing the telling. — Larry Correia

Ashton grinne and raised her eyebrows. "I can't believe you're telling me a Vincent boy brought you to Grove, Alabama and not me."
Shrugging, I returned her smile. "They're heard to resist."
"Don't I know it. — Abbi Glines

I can reach a kid who doesn't have any ability as long as he doesn't know it. — Bear Bryant

I'm always kind of hoping that I'll get a movie that shoots in Alabama so I can go back and kind of get a break from my city life. — Nolan Gould

Up north, you could find these radio stations with no name on the dials that played pre-rock 'n' roll things - country blues. We would hear Slim Harpo or Lightnin' Slim and gospel groups, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I was so far north, I didn't even know where Alabama was. — Bob Dylan

little treasure as I can," Chloe's nanny said, closing the front door behind her. Dottie's children and three grandbabies lived in Alabama, so she didn't see them as often as she'd like. It was inevitable and only a matter of time before — JoAnn Durgin

Just think about it: what in the name of God would Alabama be without the University of Alabama? What would Oklahoma be without the University of Oklahoma? Nothing. — Dan Jenkins

She knew for a fact, for instance, that what the Polo sisters did behind the closed doors of their adjoining rooms was still illegal in Alabama. — John Varley

past. The Taybers in Alabama are not even — John Grisham

The three biggest funerals in Alabama history define the state's contending loyalties, I was told: George Wallace's, Martin Luther King's, and Bear Bryant's. — Paul Theroux

Captain Richard Phillips of the good ship Maersk Alabama - and Sully Sullenberger splashing down his crippled airliner in the Hudson River - broke through the poisonous smog of economic depression and Wall Street skullduggery with a reminder that pure individual heroism is a daily occurrence if we know where to look for it. — Tina Brown

At Alabama, our players don't win Heisman Trophies. Our teams win National Championships. — Bear Bryant

I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, a thoroughly dedicated rocket town. The father of everyone I knew - mine included - was some sort of engineer working to build the Apollo rockets to send men to the moon. For a while as a child, I thought that when you grew up you became a rocket engineer if you were a boy and you married a rocket engineer if you were a girl; few other options in the world appeared to exist. — Mike Brown

I am in a two-stoplight town in the Alabama hill country, in the heart of the Bible Belt and Crimson Tide football mania, listening to an old-fashioned, heated argument between Cubans like the ones I've heard in Little Havana in Miami, but the moment very quickly loses its sense of strangeness and cultural dissonance. This is what America is like now
North America, I mean, the United States. The craziness of cubanos and mexicanos and guatemaltecos can find you just about anywhere — Hector Tobar

I've met the people who run Alabama. Believe me, they're not that smart. — Ken Follett

I plan on staying at Alabama for the rest of my career. I guarantee that I'll be here for you through it all, regardless of what happens. — Bear Bryant

As far as heroes thorough the years, I'd say definitely Alabama and Randy Owen, Conway Twitty was a big influence of mine, George Strait, Lionel Richie. — Luke Bryan

While the level of support we can each provide certainly varies, it is very important at this time that we all do what we can to help our neighbors - not only our immediate neighbors here in Alabama, but those further away in Mississippi and Louisiana. — Jo Bonner

I love Israel, I go back all the time. I just love New York a little more. My workers are Arabs, my best friend is a black man from Alabama, my girlfriend's a Puerto Rican, and my landlord is a half-Jew bastard. You know what I did this morning? I read in the paper yesterday that the circus is setting up in the Madison Square Garden, they said the elephants would be walking through the Holland Tunnel at dawn. I'm a photographer a little too, you know? So I get up at five o'clock, bike over to the tunnel, and wait. It turns out the paper got it wrong, they came through the Lincoln, but still, you know? This is a hell of a place. — Richard Price

Think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around to Selma, Alabama. — Barry McGuire

It was electric. When Death Valley is rocking, it seems as if it might actually take flight. On Saturday, I went back to Baton Rouge to see Alabama barely beat LSU, and was, once again, reminded that Tiger Stadium is the best place in the world to watch a sporting event ... I'm not sure what it was like to walk into the Coliseum, but I bet it was something like this. — Wright Thompson

There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus. — Joshilyn Jackson

* Even though the restriction couldn't be enforced under federal law, the state ban on interracial marriage in Alabama continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000, reformers finally had enough votes to get the issue on the statewide ballot, where a majority of voters chose to eliminate the ban, although 41 percent voted to keep it. A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found that 46 percent support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40 percent oppose such a ban, and 14 percent are undecided. — Bryan Stevenson

African Americans had been compelled to work in Alabama mines prior to the Great Depression. His grandfather, once a coal miner himself, had told him stories of a similar burial field near the family home place south of Birmingham. — Douglas A. Blackmon

Sitting there in the Alabama winter with my mouth full of cold turnip and mud, I could see at least for a moment how if you ever took truly to heart the ultimate goodness and joy of things, even at their bleakest, the need to praise someone or something for it would be so great that you might even have to go out and speak of it to the birds of the air. — Frederick Buechner

In Alabama, even though 65 percent of all homicide victims were black, nearly 80 percent of the people on death row were there for crimes against victims who were white. — Bryan Stevenson

As long as the struggle was down in Alabama and Mississippi, they could look afar and think about it and say how terrible people are. When they discovered brotherhood had to be a reality in Chicago and that brotherhood extended to next door, then those latent hostilities came out. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Alabama fans love Alabama football. Auburn fans love Auburn. — Pat Dye

The expectation level is high at the University of Alabama and it should be. What's wrong with people expecting excellence? — Gene Stallings

Reared in rural southern Alabama, we enjoyed an idyllic Huck Finn boyhood. But education there was casual at best. Our mother and father were high school teachers and challenged the pervasive easy-going ignorance. — Gregory Benford